Newcastle Robotics Laboratory

The Newcastle Robotics Laboratory is an interdisciplinary research and training initiative of several robotics related research teams from different research areas including applied mathematics, architecture, computer science, control, electrical engineering, neuroscience, mechatronics and software engineering.

A significant market growth in robotics and smart technology related areas has been predicted for the coming years. The Newcastle Robotics Laboratory addresses this development by providing world-class training of experts and applying cutting-edge research in robot control, computer vision, communications,
data analysis, localisation, machine learning, space perception, world modelling, and human-robot interaction to a variety of innovative tasks and projects.

The lab's activities reach from outreach to school students (RoboCup Junior), our various robotics related undergraduate degrees, postgraduate degrees, and workshops, to industry placements and large-scale research projects.

Central to the lab has been for more than twelve years the NUbot team (RoboCup world champions in 2006 and 2008) that uses the Kid-Size Humanoid robot soccer league domain as a well-defined test bed to develop solutions for wider application in other research and application areas. These days the lab comprises a variety of research projects and is linked to several research
groups and centres including CDSC, CIBER, CIBM,
RobotX
, the Helicopter Team and HMRI.

Research Areas

Adaptive Control

Artificial Emotions

Artificial Intelligence

Classification and Clustering

Companion Robots

Computational Neuroscience

Data Mining Techniques

Digital Control

Digital Image Processing

Dimensionality Reduction

Evolutionary Computation

Extended Kalman Filters

Flexible Distribution Functions

Feedback Control and Regulation

Manifold Learning

Motor Control and Legged Locomotion

Neural Networks

Reinforcement Learning

Robot Programming

Software Engineering

Support Vector Machines

Vision Systems

Projects

Several postgraduate and undergraduate projects are associated with our NUbots robot soccer competition team which participates in the Humanoid League of RoboCup. The projects address various aspects of robot vision, robot learning, biped motor control, localisation, world modelling, behaviour,
and human-robot interaction.

New projects are possible for postgraduate, honours, and final year project students, in the areas of machine learning, image processing, control, and statistics. For details please contact the academics in the contact list. For information on scholarships please see the RHD pages.